How Skill Mapping Can Improve Employee Engagement and Retention

Employee turnover might seem harmless, but it’s become a real pain for companies today. A 2019 Gallup study shows that U.S. businesses could lose up to a trillion dollars each year due to employees leaving. What could be the issue? Often, workers feel their skills are wasted or there’s too much inefficiency in their roles. Losing good staff is a big problem; it’s like throwing money into a black hole that gives nothing back and pulls everyone down with it.

Reports by Gallup indicate that only 15 percent of employees all over the world feel engaged at work. And that only leaves a staggering 85 percent that does not care less or are for the most part very unconcerned. This huge disinterest looks at how employers need to look for ways to align the strength of the employee with what the organization wants to achieve. While quite often it is not taken into account, skill mapping is becoming one of the most effective approaches to address this problem.

What Is Skill Mapping?

In effect, skill mapping is a way in which firms can tell what employees are capable of doing and align it with the need for competencies in current and new jobs. The strategy becomes all the more significant as firms go all out to bridge the gap that remains between their talent and the ever-changing needs. Therefore, an updated list of what skills are owned by the employees is critical for a business to be proactive and take the initiative whenever such skills are missing, but this should not compromise its agility in response to shifting markets or innovations within the technologies.

The recent World Economic Forum report says that by 2025, half of the people out there will have to learn new skills. These come in because of the fast-changing events at the workplace-a job that is being done by robots and new high-tech technology. Therefore, in this regard, it points to the importance of knowing which skills the team possesses and where to improve. This is the way through which companies are geared towards uncontrolled changes and ensure that their workers can thrive and prosper in a world full of turmoil.

Moreover, a LinkedIn Learning experiment found that companies with engaged employees had an 87 percent chance of losing them less compared to others. Mapping of skills is likely to increase this engagement since it provides the workers with clear paths for advancement and promotion. There is a big tendency for people to be better committed and become more conversant with the roles they play when they know where their talents align with what the company intends to achieve as well as when they look for prospects in the future. 

Strategic Value of Skill Mapping

Skills are usually under-exercised or unequally utilized by most people. Companies will battle this challenge if the talents of employees are not brought to work in their jobs. This can be solved because skill mapping can lay out everybody’s skills, ensuring that people are put in a place where they can do their best and get better.

Skill mapping helps employees know what they are headed to on the career front hence keeping them more devoted to the job. It gives insight into what they do great and on what aspects they might need improvement hence showing them a direct path to getting ahead. This can keep highs spiraling high and helps keep people from jumping ship since the employees feel more about their work and the climbing ladder.

Employee Engagement Through Skill Mapping: Improving

As well as any employee will use their abilities, so much more will be invested in his work. If what someone is gifted at happens to find a corresponding fit with what he does, then he is likely to be attached to his job all the more. The key, of course, here is figuring out where employees best fit on the job continuum because it will best position them to shine.

Suppose an arithmetic whiz who finds themself in a creativity project. When such combinations are not checked, the blend may not be emphasized. The individual thus ends up feeling dragged down, and the location loses what the person could have done. That means such talents like skill mapping can find, and changes get people into spots where they perform on their strong points.

The Role of Learning Experience Platforms in Skill Mapping

LXPs or Experience Learning Platforms are the only keys to skills mapping projects when you are initiating creative work. The highly innovative platform gives learning just like the glove fits to whatever skills you’re missing as found in the skill mapping. They are very unlike your regular LMS, or Learning Management Systems, which just add the same material for everybody. Through LXPs, every individual can understand what they require and then set them up with the resources that fit right where they need to grow. 

Read the blog Benefits of LXP for Your Organization by Auzmor to know more about how LXPs can transform your organization into a learning organization.

All that built the power of skill mapping and LXPs means that businesses could invest in the right training programs directed toward current and future needs for jobs. LXPs keep learning as they suggest classes, reads, and other resource activities that align with what an employee knows and where she might want to go career-wise. It is about forcing an employee to be worn into their growth rather than just soaking up some information. An LXP is characterized by very interesting features such as smart content recommendations, learning with others, and getting instant feedback. Altogether, all of these add up to make the whole learning process much more interesting and immersive.

In most ways, LXPs do maintain the productivity and retaining of employees. When employee sense that a company has got their back for both personal and work goals, they’ll stay put. This study by LinkedIn Learning shows that 94% of employee would stay for a longer period at their job if their career growth gets supported. LXPs lay down the tracks for this kind of care and to build an environment where getting better never stops and people think long-term.

As a consequence, the smart insights that LXPs provide the firms also help the latter to work on changing their approaches to skill mapping non-stop. Firms explore how employees engage and learn spotting the good things and the parts that need more work. It forms a loop of information keeping the game of skill-mapping on point to ensure that it sticks to what employees and the firm require.

Application of Skill Mapping as a Retention Tool

Another area in which this tool may prove to be of high value is in the process of the company’s human resources retention. High turnover is primarily attributed to job dissatisfaction arising when the employees have little prospect of growth within their respective organizations. Skill mapping provides the big picture of opportunities the employees can have in the organization thus availing good reasons why the employee should not think of leaving the organization. 

If the employees find out all the possibilities that they can get within the company, they will not switch their allegiance to other companies. Skill mapping may also guide managers to engage with the employees in discussions on the career path, providing valuable guidance to individuals. This proactive approach is very critical in ensuring that talented workers are retained and in keeping a workforce at optimum productivity.

Real-World Applications of Skill Mapping

An International Technology Company: This international technology company had a big problem with lots of people quitting those in the middle ranks. They ran a skill mapping operation and figured out many of their employees were not getting to use all their skills and talents. When they matched up what jobs needed doing with what their employees were good at, a few more employees were happier, and not as many decided to leave.

Implementing Skill Mapping in Your Organization

Businesses ready to start skill mapping need to get a strong grip on the skills different positions demand. They need to work tight with team leaders and managers to pinpoint what it takes to do well in each job.

Then determine what your team already has. You might ask employees to rate their skills, get the managers to weigh in, or even get an outside opinion. The trick is to be able to get good information about what your team can do.

Using this information, organizations can plan how the employees are going to evolve through the ranks identifying opportunities for them to advance. Keep this game plan flexible to change whenever the employees acquire new skills or the company’s objective or strategy changes.

Overcoming Challenges in Skill Mapping

Skill mapping, like any big plan, has its challenges on the road. Employees sometimes push back because they might feel we are judging them on their skills too much. Very importantly, we need to communicate that skill mapping is not about finger-pointing but about unlocking what they are good at. The more that companies demonstrate that skills mapping helps workers grow on and off the job, the more likely people are to be reassured by and even want to join in.

The next challenge would be to ensure that skill mapping is not a one-shot activity. Skills and what the company needs keep changing, hence updating the skill map is something that needs to be done all the time. This means both the seniors and the employees have to be up for sticking with the process and keeping it fresh. 

Here’s a blog by Auzmor on Challenges in Skill Mapping and How to Overcome Them. Read this to get a better understanding of the challenges involved in skill mapping.

The Future of Skill Mapping

Companies need to understand all kinds of complicated matters dealing with the management of talent from its people, therefore checking out what skills they possess turns out to be very necessary. Getting the right people with the right skills to match what the company needs is going to be a big deal for those who want to do well when everyone’s trying to be the best.

Besides that, given all the technology becomes motioned to places, we’ll see even more interesting ways to determine these skills that are much more straightforward and work like a charm. For example, just think about how artificial intelligence can offer suggestions on the fly, enabling businesses to stay at a competitive pace.

Conclusion: The Path Forward

At the end of the day skill mapping is one of the most practical and potent ways to eventually lead towards retaining employees. Since organizations are dealing with some of the older challenges of modern talent management, there is a quest to identify and connect what skills exist in your workforce. Because those people with the needed skills are mapped out to the organization’s needs in an organizational context, their talent will be much more engaging, productive, and loyal to an organization.

Skill mapping offers other benefits in addition to retention. In the first place, it creates a culture of learning and development by making employees feel valued enough to perform at their best. This leads to better job satisfaction that will be translated into performance improvement and, in the end, create a change in organizational culture.